During the act of firefighting, firefighters commonly create a manmade opening into a compartmentalized area containing a fire. This can pose an extreme danger to both fire personnel and occupants who may be present in uninvolved areas. The responding firefighters are therefore faced with the dilemma of rapidly getting water on the fire, while maintaining the integrity of the entrance door or other opening through which they apply their hose streams. The solution, in the form of a quick connect stream applicator or rapid placement stream applicator, is a component and tool that assists firefighters in applying water to fires burning within an enclosed area, space or room in a building, structure or vessel, including a subway or utility vault. As such, this device in all of its embodiments will be generally identified as Rapid Access Containment (RAC) devices. These RAC devices will allow the firefighters to apply water to the fire without the need to create a manmade opening.
Firefighting is a dangerous activity stemming partly from the unpredictable nature of the fire in general and the difficulty in many cases for the fire fighter to access the fire. A common technique in firefighting is to limit or cut off a supply of oxygen so that a fire can be contained and extinguished. Various techniques exist to accomplish this general goal, such as dousing a fire with oxygen-absorbing or limiting chemicals, or with water. When a fire occurs in an internal structure, such as a residential apartment, warehouse, high-rise building or the like, it is difficult in many instances to access a fire area with firefighting equipment while simultaneously limiting or avoiding the introduction of oxygen to the fire environment. It should be noted that fire conditions are significantly exacerbated when doors or windows are left open or fail, especially on upper floors of hi-rise buildings, resulting in what is commonly known as a “wind driven fire”. This phenomenon causes the fire to quickly reach blowtorch proportions in the public hallways and stairways and has claimed the lives of numerous firefighters and civilians in recent years. Likewise, in the occurrence of an apartment fire, for example, the sudden introduction of a large supply of oxygen to a fire—which will occur when fire fighters open or force entry into an apartment via its entrance door to gain access to the fire with fire hoses—creating conditions for a phenomenon known as a “backdraft” which has threatened and taken the lives of many fire fighters over the years.
By definition, a backdraft is a phenomenon that can occur when an oxygen deficiency exists in a fire while the remaining combustible fuel gases are present at a temperature hotter than the ignition point of the fuel gases. If oxygen is re-introduced to the fire, combustion will restart, often explosively, as the gases are heated by the combustion and expand rapidly because of the rapidly increasing temperature condition occurring.
Accordingly, it is an object of the disclosed embodiments to provide a device that facilitates rapid access to a fire area by firefighters in order to introduce water to the fire so that it can be contained and extinguished without the introduction of additional oxygen into the fire area and thus limit to the greatest degree possible the adverse effects of any wind driven fire. At the same time the device will prohibit the spread of heat and fire gases into other occupied areas of the structure or building. As such, this device in all of its embodiments will be generally identified as Rapid Access Containment (RAC) devices.